January 13, Evanston, Ill. - Last Saturday’s match-up between Wisconsin and Northwestern proved to be much more interesting than expected. This game was not in complete control until the final seconds with the Badgers holding on to a slim lead of 52 to 50 with 51 seconds on the clock. They were lucky to have returned to Madison with a 3-0 record in the Big Ten race. Rather than a 56-50 win, this could have been a very ugly road loss for the Badgers.
Bo Ryan is an excellent coach, but his team did not have answers for the shifting zone defenses the Wildcats deployed throughout the game. In the first half the Badgers were able to exploit their superior height advantage for some easy lay-ups and an early lead, but the NU zone forced a number of turnovers, some of which were converted to easy lay-ups. The Badgers’ ball handling skills were unimpressive as the Cats tallied 8 steals and 18 points off Badger turnovers. Imagine what a better team would have done to these Badgers! Surely, Bo will have some ugly nightmares about teams far superior to Northwestern who will study the tapes of this game to come up with a way to defeat his squad.
From the start, the Cats were able to control the pace of the game as the low scoring game indicates. The Cats held a 2 point edge at the half and it was not until 26 minutes into the game that Tucker scored his third and fourth points. Slowly, Tucker began to take control of the game offensively as none of his mates were capable of cracking the zone.
Northwestern received unexpected offensive firepower from freshman Jeff Ryan who had 15 points at the half, but this strong first half went unrecognized in the second as his teammates, particularly Tim Doyle, failed to find him. Ryan’s only second half field goal came at the 51 second mark. Had Doyle done a better job of setting up his teammates with some of his nifty passes for good inside shots down the stretch, the Cats would have had a chance to make this game even closer.
While Tucker is as good as his news clips suggest, the game highlighted some major vulnerabilities in his team. First, they do not have an effective point guard. Neither Kammron Taylor nor Michael Flowers demonstrated the ability to take charge with the ball and break down the Cat defenses. They struggled to find Alando and his taller teammates for scoring opportunities.Â
A second major weakness for the Badgers is the lack of effective outside shooting. The team shot only 2 for 12 from the three point arc. Three point specialist, Jason Bohannon, played limited minutes, and he was unsuccessful in the only three point shot he took. These weaknesses will give Bo Ryan nightmares as they could mean an early knock-out in the postseason against a team that does good home work and has a bit more athleticism than Northwestern. Remember the Missouri St. loss where even a stellar performance by Tucker (26 points) was not enough to seal the victory.
The Badgers put a very tall starting five on the floor at the start of the game, but it came at the cost of sloppy ball control and playmaking. Without good ball handling and effective outside shooting, the Badger size does not yield a great advantage, even though they did outrebound the Cats 37 to 22. The Cats shot only 22.2 percent from the 3 point arc and 38 percent of all their shots in the Wisconsin game. Imagine what the score would have been had the Cats shot in more normal percentage ranges. And these very low percentages were not because the Badgers played stellar defense. There were many missed shots from NU’s lack of execution.Â
In summary, it was not a good performance by the Badger team, but NU played even worse. Throughout the season, the Cats have established a consistent pattern of going into long offensive dry spells at crucial points in games and they did this again on Saturday. Had they been able to find ways to keep the offensive pressure on the Badgers, this game could have been a big win for them.Â
Northwestern is now in an awful position with successive road games in Columbus against a fast improving team and Minneapolis before returning to Welsh-Ryan to play the Buckeyes again. Salvaging at least one game from these three is a must for this very young and fragile team.
